Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland

One item on display in the section of concentration camps at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland, is a nativity scene created by a group of Polish women confined in the Ravensbrück camp. Next to the traditional nativity figures are a series of Disney characters. At first, the juxtaposition of these figures seems puzzling, but with a deeper understanding of Polish culture historically, it becomes clear that children and adults of interwar Poland were familiar with both these traditional and Western figures. In her new book, Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland, Ewa Stańczyk shows that elements of foreign comics and other low-brow features have long been present in Polish culture, as in many other cultures around the world. As Stańczyk confirms, Polish comics are a balancing act between homegrown, European, American, and Japanese influences (p. 167).Comics and Nations brings into focus a refreshing perspective on the seemingly old question of what nationalism is, and in particular what Polishness is, through the prism of comics. As the author illustrates, despite the fact that many “colorful products of foreign culture” were “abjured as a supposedly inferior medium” and “feared to have a damaging effect on national culture,” they have been an inherent part of Polish culture (p. 3). Comics have been used to demonstrate what it means to be a Polish patriot and how Polish patriotism and consumerism of global culture often go hand in hand. As the author states: “In the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the medium has become a pretext and a prop with which to tackle wider political, social, and cultural issues” (p. 4).The book is organized chronologically into five chapters, starting with the earliest development of Polish comics in interwar Poland (although the pictorial narrative had been present in Poland since the mid-nineteenth century); moving through the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s; and finally ending with the most recent decades of the twenty-first century. In addition to including countless examples of various comics, the author reviewed articles from daily and weekly presses and magazines from the 1930s to the present to incorporate the most complex images of comics in Polish culture and the role they played in various public debates.The history of some Polish comic books contains fascinating stories and insights. For example, launched in 1938, one of the popular even if short-lived comics was Gazetka Miki (Mickey's little paper), which interestingly incorporated elements of various imported comics, such as Snow White, Mickey Mouse, the Three Little Pigs, and Pluto. Polish authors contributed to Gazetka Miki, and, as Stańczyk argues, the editors, Wanda Wasilewska and Janina Broniewska, attempted to make the comic ethnically inclusive; for example, it was advertised in both Polish and Polish Jewish media. It also encouraged dialogue with its readers as it included a number of activities that invited the public to participate. With such publications, Miki was becoming a popular character for Polish children to the point of making his appearance in religious artifacts, such as the nativity scene created by concentration camp prisoners. In an interesting twist of history, the Polish comic character Koziołek Matołek became friends with Myszka Mickey in one of the episodes of the stories.The post-1945 decades were marked by a growing dismissal of comics. In the 1950s these books were viewed largely as imperialist propaganda, leading to an absence of comics in Poland (chapter 3). It was not until the 1970s that comics experienced a resurgence (chapter 4). The last two chapters point to the role that comics played in the transition from state socialism to a market economy. Interestingly, seen as a product of capitalism and an invasive foreign material from the West, the medium was received skeptically in post-1989 Poland.The last section of the book is also one of the most interesting, as it discusses the emergence of comics in the 2000s. In the past two decades, the market for comic books grew exponentially in terms of breadth and depth (p. 145). Polish comic books, like graphic novels and comics all over the world, carry different meanings to different audiences; the goals they serve also change depending on social and political circumstances. Goals changed dramatically with the 1989 transformations and into the twenty-first century. In the last couple of decades, Poland developed two important comic genres: graphic memoirs often written by women that record personal experiences and are inspired by an anthropological mode of writing developed in the West and state-funded historical works that demonstrate a revival of patriotic and nationally minded narratives.Comics and Nations is an interesting book that readers who love graphic novels will find both enjoyable and insightful. It can also be a good companion for a graduate or undergraduate class based on comic books and graphic novels. I do, however, wish that the book included a discussion on the different types of comic books: for example, differences between graphic novels and comic books, in particular in Poland but also in a global context. A discussion on changing audiences of comic books in the Polish context from the 1920s to the twenty-first century would also have added value to this work. The author mentions the emotional community that the readerships of these books/stories evokes, but a thorough elaboration on the development and changes of these communities while drawing on different intersectional audiences would have been useful (p. 169).